Michael Mercillives in Columbus, Ohio, where he is Professor in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University. He received an MFA from the University of Chicago in 1988, and a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design in 1978.

Mercil’s art explores the realms of “the near, the low, the common” in works somewhere close to—if not always within—the categories of sculpture, drawing, painting, landscape architecture, film, performance, and agriculture. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions organized by museums and art centers throughout the United States.

In 2005, with Ann Hamilton, Mercil began The Living Culture Initiative, a project integrating contemporary art practices within the core research framework of OSU—a public land-grant college dedicated, in 1870, to teaching the “mechanical, agricultural and liberal arts.” In 2006, Mercil planted The Beanfield as an agri/cultural experiment with the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Social Responsibility Initiative in the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Because good farmers rotate crops, in 2008, Mercil converted The Beanfield into The Virtual Pasture (2008– 2011) where he has proposed installing a green energy park and carbon storage bank called, Wind|Farm.

Other recent projects include Thoreau’s Desk (2014-15) a music composition for percussion trio commissioned by the deCordova Sculpture Garden and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts. In 2016, Mercil will open Art Market™, located in Columbus, Ohio.

Mercil’s recent documentary Covenant: a film about farm animals (and us), premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2013, and has screened at festivals across the United States and abroad. His writings have appeared in Edible Columbus, PLACES magazine, Public Art Review, and TriQuarterly. Mercil’s essay, co-authored with Amanda Gluibizzi, on Lucy Lippard’s “Dematerialization of the Art Object …” is included as a chapter in the 2016 Cambridge History of Postmodern Literature.